Although the twelfth century is often presented as a ‘Golden Age’ of English historical writing, few historians have discussed the portrayal of twelfth-century women. An important exception, Marjorie Chibnall’s study of women in Orderic Vitalis, is valuable for the way it explores Orderic’s presentation of noblewomen according to their marital status, class and wealth.¹ Essentially, Chibnall agreed with Eileen Power that the image of women in literature was complex and reflected the place of women in society generally.² Power had warned of the need for careful treatment of the sources when she argued that women’s theoretical position and their power...

Twelfth-century noblewomen exerted power and influence through cultural patronage, and scholars have begun to clarify ways that noblewomen were important. Janet Nelson has stressed that, although women were excluded from the formal religious and political authority most often associated with literacy, they still participated in the culture of literacy.¹ June McCash has similarly argued that noblewomen overcame socio-cultural obstacles to participate in cultural patronage in the various literary, religious, artistic and poetic fields.² Elisabeth van Houts confirmed the importance of female patrons of historiography, and their role as repositories of family history and in the instruction of their sons, and...

Charters show that women of comital rank routinely fulfilled administrative roles at various stages in the female life cycle. The focus here is on charter evidence relating to those aristocratic women who were explicitly accorded the titlecomitissa,or else were married to men of comital rank, or were born into such families. Comparison with other high-ranking women is included where appropriate, in order to illustrate the central argument that women’s power was constructed through the family in their role as wife or widow, and was thus tied to the female life cycle. Such power, like that of men, was...

Hawise countess of Gloucester (d. 1197) attested 75 per cent of the charters of her husband, Earl William.¹ Her title is comitissa, sometimes elaborated ascomitissa Glouc(estrie). On one charter she isHaw(is)ia uxore mea.She is the first witness in all but four acta.² The charter witness lists place Hawise at the apex of the internal hierarchy of the Gloucester power structure on her husband’s charters. Hawise was also involved in transactions where she was the recipient of countergifts. One is a charter confirming the grant by a tenant to Holywell Priory, London, in which Earl William received seven...

The exchange of material and spiritual countergifts was a method of ensuring the security of the land transfers which charters record. Historians view their significance in differing ways. Emily Tabuteau’s pragmatic interpretation argues that contemporary society received both juridical and spiritual benefits through gift exchange and that material countergifts given to relatives of a donor represented a form of compensation for loss of land.¹ According to John Hudson, countergifts re-emphasised the mutuality between parties, that is, between donor(s) and beneficiary, could be symbolic and were usually voluntary.² This approach is similar to that of Barbara Rosenwein, who stressed the relationships...

There are over 145 extant secular women’s seals from the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.¹ They present the historian with unique opportunities to study the portrayal of female identity in twelfth-century England. Seals were visual representations of power, and they conveyed notions of authority and legitimacy. They publicly presented a view of both men and women which visibly crystallised ideas about gender, class and lordship. The modern historian of seals owes a considerable debt to antiquarian scholars such as Sir Christopher Hatton, and to Sir Walter de Gray Birch, who did much to catalogue the extensive collections of extant impressions...

In 1180 bertram, the chamberlain of Earl Hugh II of Chester, married Mabel, the heiress of WilliamFlamenc,and by grant of charter received her inheritance. Little is known of the origins of Bertram, and likewise the descent of Mabel’s inheritance, from the time of Robert of Rhuddlan, who held the manor of Great Meols in 1066, is also obscure.¹ What is clear, however, is that Bertram’s service in his lord’s household as chamberlain was rewarded with marriage to an heiress. Earl Hugh was here evidently exercising his right of marriage of the heiress of a tenant to reward a...

TheRotuli de Dominabus et Pueris et Puellis de XII Comitatibusof 1185 are a record of a royal inquiry into widows and wards who were in the king’s gift.¹ It is an important insight into the position of noblewomen in the later twelfth century, and in particular the way that they were seen by local juries under the direction of the agents of central government – and the way the intervention of that government might affect their lives. The surviving records cover twelve counties in England: Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Rutland, Huntingdonshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertfordshire, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Middlesex. Women...